Walkthrough of the slack

The following guidelines are to help the participants get acquainted with the basic outline of the ST⁴ 2020 slack workspace. We also give a set of guidelines with the intention of assisting those members of participants who may have never used a slack workspace before. The workspace can be joined by invitation only. Invitation has been sent to all registered participants on 15th June. If you are a registered participant and did not get the invite, please let us know by email. If you have not registered but want to attend this year's meeting, please contact the organisers as soon as possible.

1. ST⁴ 2020 will be coordinated almost entirely using slack. If you want to attend the lectures and participate in the ensuing discussions, joining is mandatory. On joining you will become members of 10 channels by default. Below we give a summary of these channels and their primary intended purposes.

• a. #st4-2020 – This is the core channel of seminar related announcements. The Zoom links and livestream links (if needed) will be posted only in this channel. All participants are strongly encouraged to regularly check this channel for updates and announcements. This is the only channel on which the sole posting right is restricted to organizers.

• b. #introduction – Please use this channel to introduce yourself to other members. This is a great way to share your interests and find other people who share similar inclinations and interests.

• c. #breakroom-banter – This channel is for any chitchat or conversations that you may find yourself drawn to during the breaks. This is also a great platform to advertise any new channel that you may have created to discuss about a specific topic (see point 3 below).

• d. #topic-speaker – There are 7 such channels, one for each speaker (recall the topic “Complexity” will be covered by 3 speakers). The speakers will use this channel to provide backgrounds, supplementary reading materials etc. Once the lectures start, people can use this channel to ask questions, debate and discuss about the specific lecture topics in the respective channels. The speakers will also use this channel to answer any questions or clear any doubts.

2. We will request you to consider using a picture of yourself on the profile. In a virtual platform, this small step often helps in establishing a humane ambience.

3. Any user is free to create their own channels focusing on a specific research topic. This is a great way to start a new collaboration and/or study group. The workspace already includes the Latex app which will enable one to discuss technical stuffs which require writing equations. For an introduction to using latex in slack click here . Before creating a channel however, we strongly advise to check the existing list of channels to avoid excessive creation of channels discussing similar and/or closely related topics.

4. This workspace, admittedly, is by no means a direct replacement of in-person discussions. However, online discussion forums have their own advantages. One of the reasons we are opening this workspace 3 weeks prior to the start of the meeting is to give all the participants enough time to familiarize themselves with the environment. Hopefully, by the time the lectures start, most of us, if not all, will be well equipped to have dynamic discussions on slack.

5. The organizers have found over the past several months of using slack, that installing slack on your laptop/desktop as well as on your mobile/tablets help a lot to acclimatize faster. Slack was never meant to be used solely by accessing it from a browser. Think of it like any other communication/chat apps that you use on your day-to-day lives and that will help in ensuring you do not miss out on any important notifications.